A verizon technician by the name of Tony showed up at 9am to fix one television box that was not working. His arrival that early was unexpected, since the order had been from 2-8 pm that evening.

He began by looking at the television and the box for about 30 minutes, walking around the property looking at wire connections and trying to assess what the problem could be.

He said he wanted to check all the tv boxes in the house, however the owner didn’t give him access to her room, because as she said it was working fine. An hour later he said he believed it was the router in the office that was broken and would need to be replaced. The owner informed him immediately that it was not the router and instructed him not to touch the router and not do anything in the home office. She could reboot the router herself if needed. She said the internet, telephones and televisions were all working fine and that it was only a single box that was not working. If the router was broken, she said then the other services in the house would not be working either.

He continued checking wire connections and splitters throughout the property and came back into the office and, changed out the router while the owner was not in that room, without permission.

It was after he changed the router that the internet, phones and televisions all went down. The tech realized, that the new router didn’t solve the problem, in fact it only had made things worse.

He was now confused because he could not remember which wires went where and he made no indications or markings on any of them before he started to unplug them. The owners’ assistant had to troubleshoot with him as he plugged and unplugged wires, updating him about whether or not the internet was back up and running.

When the technician first took one look under the computer desk and saw a box with 24 ports, he should have realized that this was not to be touched by anyone other than an IT person and not take it upon himself to move forward without speaking to a supervisor. Any Verizon tech should know not to ever mess with an IT network. without speaking to someone about it. or listening to the owner.

At 12:30 pm the owner asked him to call for help as it was becoming increasingly apparent that things were going from bad to worse and that the day was going to prove costly due to the fact that she was unable to leave and open her shop or have the capability for any of her staff to do the work they were hired for.

Five hours later he was still trying to get the internet back online.

A second technician named Rick appeared on the scene in an attempt to undo the damage created by the first tech.
Rick, the new tech assured us that Verizon would compensate us for our losses, due to the first technician being over his head as far as the decisions he made to repair the box. He had spoken with his office and had noted what happened in his reports.

By 4pm yet another technician arrived who had been briefed on the situation that had been created by the first tech.

At this point the first tech, named Tony made a hasty retreat and left the other two technicians there.

As Rick began troubleshooting, he noticed that the IP ADDRESS was different on one of the computer screens. With his level of expertise he immediately realized the networks had their own unique code and asked the owner to contact her IT person asap so he could speak with him.

By 7 pm the issue was still unresolved, however, Rick promised that he would personally be there in the morning by 9 am to do whatever he had to, to restore our service.

Faced with the possible loss of yet another day and an evening, the owner begged her IT person who was scheduled to go on vacation to show up at 10:30 pm that evening, way after normal business hours, due to the nature and seriousness of the issue. She no longer believed that Verizon could correct the problem.

With nowhere else to go we had to pay double the normal rate of $150 per hour for the 4 hours of his time/services to correct a problem that should have never been created. A problem that could have been resolved in 15 minutes with someone competent and who didn’t go AGAINST THE CUSTOMERS WISHES.
The IT person told us that Verizon would not have been able to fix the problem as they didn’t understand the network. They plugged in to a LAN port instead of a WAN port which caused the system to loop.

We followed up on Rick’s information about receiving compensation only to be told that the only compensation was $2.53 for lose of service. Our losses for IT person staff, etc exceed $2500 not counting the loss of potential business that would have been earned those days.

Everything about Verizon sucks except for your “Superman” technician, Rick Gwin (Employee # AEO), who was the only one who had the knowledge and was personally concerned enough to try and fix the issues. RIck is the kind of employee that represents Verizon well and they need more techs like him if they want to keep their customers.

We have been with Verizon for over 20 years. We have four different Verizon accounts.. We use Verizon for our wireless service and in two homes and a business. We spend well over $2,000.00/monthly, so we are good, consistent and loyal customers.

Verizon should take responsibility for their mistakes. As a business owner if we didn’t take care of our customers, we would soon be out of business. If this does not get resolved in a satisfactorly way by Verizon then perhaps the only recourse may be legal. We will also be tempted to look for service elsewhere in the future, since our loyalty has been severely tested.

People like Rick are not really valued as employees at Verizon because by doing what he did, he was hurting his own "numbers." Nevertheless ask to speak to the Fiber Solutions Center and ask to be given the claims department number and speak to Segway directly. They can take a "damage" complaint. This may or may not work but Verizon only cares about making 1 billion more than the billions they already. Also, you can also file a BBB report very easily online. I've filed with them before and always had better settlements. Don't even deal with the front-facing people, they are powerless to do anything and are treated like shit themselves.

Anonymous - Verizon H8er ID: 2A99E5

08/13/14 | 16:14PM

That last response could not have been more correct. The tech rick will most likely be disciplined for doing what would be considered the right thing to do but his manager will most likely suspend him for spending too much time. Sad!!!